


you know me i know you

by orphan_account



Category: Narcos (TV)
Genre: Character Death, Drunken Confessions, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Smut, Love Confessions, M/M, Partners to Lovers, Sad Ending, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-17
Updated: 2018-01-03
Packaged: 2019-02-16 03:43:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13045767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Mustacheboyfriends "character study" collection drabblesTags will be added with new chapters.





	1. all in time

**Author's Note:**

> Set during season three.

Groaning, Javier rubbed his forehead. It was late in Bogota, or early, depending on whom you’d ask but time doesn’t mean much when you are trapped in your own mind. Within your four walls, roof and ceiling with nothing but your thoughts. Time flies by and leaves a shadow, it never heals anything but replaces memories. It reveals all secrets and is always right.

Time was something Javier never had enough of, and he had made himself aware of this at that specific moment when it _was_ right, and _would_ reveal all - but it flew by and left that dark obscurity that followed him wherever he went. Regret.

There’s always that one mistake that changes everything, or that one mistake that changes nothing still both ways lead to the same outcome; regrets. Javier had made a mistake by letting the right time pass.

The new apartment he had been given was a tiny thing: a single room, the meager possessions within it cramped together, the window on the far wall overlooking the plain buildings across the street. He did not care, it was not home.

_What was home?_

Home was the strong scent of cheap whiskey, a husky song, a genuine warm blue, an affectionate touch. Home was a person. Home was Steve Murphy.

And Steve was Javier’s _biggest_ regret.

Time never heals and at that point it had not replaced anything either. It had not passed by fast enough. Javier sat by his desk, rummaging through old reports on the drug war to try and make sense of the new. He rubbed his forehead again.

It had been different with Steve. Easier. Two dark minds thinking alike in a dark world. One dark mind in a dark world is just another way of describing loneliness.

He could call Steve, he could. But he wouldn't. It was too late in more ways than one. What was there to say despite everything leading up to a mistake that would change everything… and nothing.

 _What was there to say?_  
  
He was a man in love with a man. A man who loves a woman. A man who has a family. A man whom he had not spoken to in over a year. A man who could never love him back.

There was nothing to say.

Pulled out of his thoughts by the phone on the desk ringing, he realized how quickly he could turn it all off. How even the strongest of feelings could be buried beneath so easy. He didn't know how he did it, how he simply lifted the phone and answered with his name. The caller on the other end spoke, and everything was not just turned back on, it all came _crashing_ down.

“Hey man, long time no see.”

But this was what he really wanted, wasn’t it? This was what he’d hoped for, in that rare moment of weakness when he’d let his thoughts stray from the present, wasn’t it?

It was.

Steve’s voice was raspier than usual, or maybe it had been too long for Javier to remember just how low his tone could reach. But no matter the roughness, it never hid the warmth, the palpability.

“Do you know what time it is?” He quickly replied, sounding as grumpy as he could, wanting Steve to remember him in ways too. It was only fair.

“Yeah sorry. I am, I-I know.” It was at this moment Javier realized that Steve was drunk. It should hurt a little that Steve did not call because he wanted to but because the alcohol told him to, and it probably did hurt but the melancholy drenching every word made him realize that the man on the other end was probably in more pain.

“How are you holding up man?” Javier asked as he put the reports on the desk and sat up in the chair.  

“Great. I’m good! Great, even. I’ve imbibed at least 40 ounces of coffee to counteract the roughly 5.26 hours of sleep I’m running on since i got promoted, yeah i got promoted by the way, and I think I cut my hand trying to climb a fence chasing a druggie last night but I can’t feel it anymore, so I’m not too worried. Oh, and I am balding but I think the look is growing on me.”

It was humor but with a hidden agenda, however clear as day to Javier. He didn’t laugh because he knew Steve knew he knew.

There was a moment of silence between them and Javier was about to speak, afraid he would hang up and let another right time pass, when Steve spoke again, confessing quietly things Javier did not need to hear clearly to know. 

He knew the words because **they were his too**.


	2. valour

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> don't hunt me down for this. i hate myself too.

Blood covers Javier’s face like a mask concealing the grotesque damage that has been done. He can't move. He tries to – he tries with all his might. Fingertips dig deep into the mud beneath him trying with what little power he has left to drag his dead weight across the riverbank. The pain in his abdomen burns like a wildfire through his entire body, the bullets rooted like a cancer in his gut. He can’t move, so he stops trying to.    
  
Instead he looks up at the night sky, a pattern of stars like a drape over him. It’s calming, the way the constellations make up stories and blink to prove their existence. Javier is jealous of them, of how their death still serves as a sense of beauty to the world. Javier’s death will be as ugly as his life had been.  
  
He doesn’t know how it happened, it shouldn’t have happened. Yet it did, on this breezy night underneath the willows by the water. As the blanket of embers begin to surround him, he is almost relieved until he finds, in the midst of all that beauty, that he can’t breathe. He closes his eyes tightly as a small croak leaves his lips.    
  
He’s never known a pain like this, never experienced such horror. He wants to scream, wants his lungs to fill with air but he doesn’t have any strength to satisfy his needs. Instead he feels his eyelids grow heavy with endless sleep but he opens them one last time and looks up at the smeared painting above. 

Darkness creeps into the depths of his vision and he is about to give in to whatever was coming next, when a face appears before him, hovering over him like a ghost. It’s a man, a beautiful man. It’s no God, Javier is certain because the man calls him by name and what higher power would care to learn of a man like him?

“Javier! Fuck!”    
  
He feels a touch, warm and gentle, as whoever is at his side picks him up in their arms and he can finally place the man, like from a dream.    
  
Steve.

Javier doesn’t try to speak because breathing hurts enough. He feels safer now, less scared of the nothing that surely was coming because he wasn’t alone. 

Javier has always been a person who wants love but he’s afraid of it. He doesn’t let himself feel it because he’s afraid. He has always struggled with underlying feelings of being unlovable. Always had trouble feeling his own value and believing anyone could really care for him.

And then the asshole Steve Murphy shows up in his life and tears down the walls Javier built for himself and it’s so easy, so easy to fall for him. So easy for Javier to let go and trust his partner with everything. 

The more we have, the more we have to lose. The more someone means to us, the more afraid we are of losing that person. When Javier fell in love with Steve, he didn’t only faced the fear of losing the one he love multiple times, but he became more aware of his own mortality. His life held more value and meaning, so the thought of losing it becomes more frightening. 

Javier had been scared of losing Steve, and was terrified of Steve losing him. And now, lying in his partner’s arms and feeling that fear slowly creep up on him like death usually does, it’s not as scary anymore. 

He is in the arms of the man he loves, and he is looking up into shocked, tear-filled blue, and he feels more alive than ever. 

“It’s going to be alright man, just hold on!” 

Hold on. As if Javier was hanging from the side of a building, hands gripping Steve’s from above. It doesn’t work like that, Javier wants to tell the other man. He is slipping, again. Slipping into no tomorrow. No tomorrow with Steve, no tomorrow without waking up to a sun, open his eyes to colours and air. No morning coffee, no goal for the day, no thoughts, no dreams, no future. 

A black nothing is what he expects because no God would ever cause this much hate, and war and pain. It doesn’t make sense. A God who put Javier on this earth to… what? Watch innocent lives go to waste, see how greed and power pulls humanity to its last leg, experience men die on battlefields for white dust. 

That life could be so tragic and beautiful at the same time. 

As he feels the last moment come, he gathers what’s left of him, of what the last thing he wants to be and he says it, or rather he exhales it. A whisper, and he hopes Steve will hear it - because it’s only for him.

“I love you.” And it’s the only time he has ever said it, the only time he has exposed himself this way and it’s enough for him. 

Enough to give in, so he does.


End file.
